Fuck you, The Salvation Army, for being a bunch of homophobic dicks!

This comes from Zinnia Jones, linked on the Atheist Videos page.

Full disclosure: my mom was a non-officer employee of The Salvation Army’s West Women’s and Children’s Shelter in northwest Portland for about 20 years (until they found a “legal” way of dismissing her, without severance or retirement*, due to her MS). During her tenure there, she had the at times unenviable position of publicly defending the Army while privately having huge concerns with them and their policies. She freely admitted privately that they’re a right-wing, fundamentalist, homophobic organization, but often claimed that despite all that, the Army “does a lot of good.” In fact, in many situations, she went so far as to claim that, in emergency situations, “The Army is often the first to arrive, the last to leave.” I can’t prove this true or false, so I won’t bother with it except to say that I always found her unwavering support of the organization a little baffling. It was a job, and I get that, but another bit of full disclosure:

My brother is gay.

Oh, and two of my cousins on my mom’s side. That’s right. I’m the only straight male in my generation of four boys. Anyway…

This also comes back to the classic debate of should one support an organization that, while it does some calculable good, also does a great deal of bad? It’s true that the Army does a lot of neat things like shelters, soup kitchens, and emergency relief effort, but then so do a lot of secular organizations that don’t discriminate against gays. And if we’re to argue that if an organization that does some good is good, then we’d have to say that pedophile organizations like The Family International are also good organizations and this is demonstrably false.

My only real point is just because an organization has a positive reputation (like certain 12-step organizations I’ve mentioned) and does some quantitative good doesn’t mean we should turn a blind eye to their made-up bullshit and demonstrable harm. It may seem convenient to drop a penny in the bell ringer’s cauldron, but it’s ultimately a slap in the face to our homosexual brethren.

One Response to “Fuck you, The Salvation Army, for being a bunch of homophobic dicks!”

Fucking have a cry you cunt. The Salvation Army are legends, they have done more for poor people on the street than you, or your army of homosexuals and LGBT people will ever do. Now go and fuck yourself.